Dental professionals commonly utilize various types of dental adhesive materials and dental impression materials in their daily dental practice. As an example, dental adhesive materials may be used to bond composites to teeth or to bond prosthetic restorations, such as crowns, into place. In addition, dental professionals may also use dental impression materials to obtain a dental impression of teeth in the process of fabricating a prosthetic restoration. Conventional dental adhesive materials and dental impression materials have several disadvantages.
On example disadvantage of conventional dental adhesive materials is the fact that conventional dental adhesive materials are generally designed to be a permanent adhesive when cured (e.g., once the permanent adhesive is cured, it is no longer possible to reverse the curing process and undo the bond created by the permanent adhesive). Often times, however, the dental professional may need to later break the bond formed by the dental adhesive material to complete a dental procedure after the dental adhesive material has cured.
For example, a conventional crown may be bonded to a tooth using a permanent adhesive. At a later time, however, the patient may develop a problem with the crowned tooth that requires the dental professional to remove the crown. Due to the permanent adhesive, the dental professional may have to drill, cut and break the crown to remove the crown from the bonded surfaces. This process of course destroys the crown, is uncomfortable for the patient, and increases cost.
Likewise, dental professionals bond orthodontic brackets to teeth using conventional permanent adhesives. Similar to the example of the crown, the dental professional often times must pry the orthodontic brackets off of the patient's teeth and aggressively remove any residual cured adhesive from the tooth with a diamond bur when the orthodontic brackets are no longer required. Thus, the process of removing orthodontic brackets becomes a costly time consuming process that may potentially scar or mark the patient's teeth.
As with conventional adhesive materials, conventional dental impression materials also have disadvantages. The conventional method of taking a dental impression involves the dental professional mixing a first and second component to form the dental impression material that chemically cures over a certain period of time. For example, when the first and second components are initially mixed, the dental impression material may be a paste-like-substance. The paste-like-substance is usually placed in a dental tray device and the patient is asked to bite down on the paste-like-substance allowing the patient's teeth to make an impression in the dental impression material. After a period of time, the dental impression material chemically cures and the paste-like-substance forms a hardened material that holds the shape of the dental impression.
As illustrated above, conventional dental impression materials require a time sensitive mixing process that relies on the dental professional to act quickly to set the dental impression material in a patient's mouth before the dental impression material starts to cure. Additionally, once the dental professional sets the dental impression material in a patient's mouth, the dental impression material may take several minutes to fully cure to the point that allows the dental professional to remove the material and maintain an accurate dental impression. Due to the curing time, the patient may be uncomfortable during the curing of the dental impression material (e.g., many patients experience a gag reflex while waiting for the dental impression material to cure). Moreover, any mouth movement during the curing of the dental impression material may result in an inaccurate dental impression, causing the dental professional to have to repeat the entire process.
Accordingly, there are a number of disadvantages in the conventional art of dental adhesive materials and dental impression materials.